Prelude to a Seduction
by jetplanejane
Summary: Darcy finds Loki skinny-dipping. Let's just say that there's not an ounce of shame between them. Also, two can play this game. A sequel of sorts to Keep Your Head, but can be read independently, if you like. Darcy/Loki


Excitement (and possibly the ale that Errol Flynn wannabe, Fandral, had plied her with) had made Darcy restless. It wasn't every day that one had the opportunity to travel through an engineered wormhole powered by energies from the quark-gluon plasma (or whatever the hell Jane had called it) to a city of gods and other cool shit. Taking a trip to Asgard felt like how she imagined her five-year-old self would've felt visiting Santa's workshop at the North Pole.

Darcy tried to picture the not-so-jolly Odin in a cheap red felt suit with herself perched in his lap.

_"Now, Darcy, have you been a good little Midgardian this year?"_

_Lol, nope, All-Daddy-o. But I've been good at being bad. Does that count? _

Okay, so maybe she was a _little_ drunk. Happy, mellow _Darcy_ drunk. She smirked and skipped over an album she'd played to death on her iPod. It was during the pause that she thought she heard what sounded like someone doing laps in a pool.

Thor or another hella-jacked Midgardian taking a midnight swim? _I could stand to see some of that. _

Plucking the earphones from her ears, Darcy followed the sound to a nearby vaulted bathhouse. A manshape was reclined on one of the pool's stone steps, his lower half submerged in the illuminated, actinic-blue water.

"Oh," Darcy observed, as casually as she could. "It's you."

Loki chuckled, his lank, wet hair plastered to his neck and the sides of his angular face. "Don't sound so disappointed, Midgardian."

He was naked, unashamedly so. Darcy's gaze slid south, over the ghost definition of muscle visible beneath the pale water-dappled skin of his stomach. Loki was lean and hard and hungry-looking; someone more interested in the rigidity and discipline of martial arts katas than lifting weights and throwing giant mythical hammers. She wasn't the least bit disappointed. _"Darcy!" _She heard Jane in her head, lending a voiceover to her guilty conscience.

She cleared her throat and straightened her shoulders. "I thought you were someone else. But since you're not, I'm just gonna –"

"Join me." It was both a command and an invitation.

"What?"

Oh, she'd heard him all right, and Loki was not one to repeat himself.

"Uh, not exactly dressed for swimming here." In case he hadn't noticed.

"Mmm," Loki hummed. Darcy felt it in her bones. In other places, too. "Sort of the point, when going for a swim, isn't it? To take one's clothes off. Are you shy?"

Darcy snorted like that was the _last _thing she'd _ever_ be. _Forget it, sassypants. Sassy_no_pants. _"Jane warned me about you."

"I'm sure she did. Fascinating woman, your friend. I might say the same of you, Darcy Lewis. Of course, I don't know you quite so well. But I'd like to."

_Heh. _She smiled slyly and wagged a finger at him. "Are you flirting with me?"

"Am I?" The mischief creasing the corners of his eyes betrayed the innocence in his voice. "Is that what this is: the prelude to a seduction?"

_Wow. Okay. _Darcy felt hot and not a little bothered. A god was hinting at wanting to fuck her or, at the very least, get her naked and wet. _My kind of fun. _Where was Jane when you needed a good slap? "I thought you were supposed to be the subtle one."

"I am a god, Darcy. After what I did on Midgard, where would you get the idea that I was subtle?"

_Good point. Also..._ "You're naked." She thumbed her hands over her shoulder. "And I should probably take them off – _I_ should take off. _Me." Not my clothes. _

Without looking where she was going, Darcy stepped back, and the smooth, well-worn sole of her boot slipped on the wet marble. A moment later she landed on her tailbone.

"Oh, dear. Are you all right?"

"No, no, I'm good." Darcy winced and waved off Loki's affected concern. But he was already rising out of the water. She screwed her eyes shut. _Nice_ – "Yeah, no, I totally meant to do that." Clinging to her iPod, she helped herself blindly to her feet. _Smooth, Darcy, real smooth. _

She felt Loki before she saw him; his hands touching the underside of her forearms as if to steady her. To her credit, Darcy didn't flinch. She didn't dare open her eyes either. _Not gonna look at your god parts. _After all, she thought, it was rude to stare.

"I'm _decent," _Loki informed her, witheringly.

Darcy cracked an eyelid. He wore a robe cinched loosely at his waist, but it left enough of his chest exposed for her to get an eyeful. Nope, definitely not Thor, but... Impulsively, she poked him there.

"Not bad at all." Darcy nodded, sagely, like someone who had over the course of her short lifetime inspected a lot of pectorals.

Loki's ravenous smile threatened to eat her alive.

"But you're gonna have to try a little harder than that."

The wolf-smile faltered. "Excuse me?"

"To impress me, I mean. That is if this is – what did you call it – 'the prelude to a seduction'?" Darcy clucked her tongue, flashed her most coy Old Hollywood starlet smile and winked at him. "Catch ya later, Sassgardian."

"Sassgardian?" A frown knitted Loki's brows as he watched her stride from the bathhouse. This mortal woman was wholly unlike Jane or Romanov. Artless and foolish – always with that music device plugged into her ears – but less predictable and, as it turned out, quite capable of a little mischief herself. And she had _challenged _him. Oh, he was going to _enjoy_ this.

The smile returned. "Not if I catch you first."


End file.
